New Scaratings

Three players, five playmakers, and we're headed into the final question of Wednesday Six aiming for a 56K site score, when the question appears, to wit:

In 2003 Kelis had a big hit with this food related song:

1. ...
2. Banana Split
3. Hamburger
4. Milkshake

My first problem was that I'd never heard of Kelis. Animal, vegetable, or mineral? I was very certain I'd never heard the song.

My second problem was that I panicked. What I needed was an elimination. I had 3,000 points riding on the question, plus the 4,000 bonus, and I should have taken #3, Hamburger, in an attempt to get an elimination of either #2 or #4. Instead, all three of us landed on #2, Banana Split, which of course was the final elimination, so we all flatlined and lost 6-10K points per playmaker.

I took my bad attitude home with me and looked up the song on YouTube. Kelis has an undistinguished voice, and sounds as if she's backed by a couple of guys working the controls of a few not-very-high-end digital synths. The song is low-beat, urban R&B, and the lyrics are remarkable for their astonishing vanity:

"My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard...
Damn right it's better than yours...
I can teach you, but I gotta charge..."

How this stuff sells and why I should know about are mysteries I can't answer. But these are the observations of a humorless old fox, who has lost touch with his inner sense of camp.

Congratulations to MAST, in Lancaster OH, who appears from this distance to be our best solo Six player, for his 61,768. And to Boomerz in Austin TX for their fine 58, 396 site score.

Can't touch this.

I only know many of these pop culture questions through Facebook memes. Those of you who have successfully avoided the time-suck that is social media (though, of course, I love it) are likely at a distinct disadvantage.

I am now envisioning a hamburger bringing all the boys to the yard.

Eewww!

Dissatisfied with Wednesday's performance, the same three players with the same five accounts went back to B-52 for Thursday Six, and I was finally able to execute the coup I've been contemplating.

In Final Six, the Pick-Your-Poison Round, I had 2,000 on The Games, when the following question appeared:

Which Hall of Fame player had his #4 jersey retired by the Boston Red Sox:
1. Jim Rice
2. Pedro Martinez
3. ...
4. Joe Cronin

"Is this Rice?" I asked AUVA. (DOTCOM had no clue.)

"It's either #1 or #2," he replied.

In my estimation it was #1 or #4, and not possibly a pitcher. So I hit #2, Pedro Martinez, hoping to get an elimination of #1 or #4, talking as I went along. Sure enough, Rice (who in fact wore #14) was the 2nd elimination. And we all moved smoothly to #4, which drew a whimper from DOTCOM: she'd put 6,000 points on The Games, and when asked why, replied, "But you guys know so much about sports!"

DOTCOM did save her 4,000 bonus, contributing to a second place site score, behind? Surprise of surprises, West Park Station.

Setting up Pedro Martinez as a straw man put me in mind of the circumstances in which I first caught wind of him. (This has nothing has nothing to do with the Six quiz, so if that's the only reason you're on this page, feel free to exit.)

On June 3, 1989, the LA Dodgers and Houston Astros played to a 4-4 tie through 11 innings, this being a Saturday night. The Dodgers had run through five pitchers, and brought in Orel Hirshiser IV, on two days rest, to start the 12th inning. Seven innings and 87 pitches later, Hirshiser had given up four hits but no runs, and the game went on. Houston ended up winning shortly before 3 AM, in the 22nd inning.

This was the season after Orel Hirshiser broke Don Drysdale's record for consecutive scoreless innings. In 1988, counting the playoffs, Hirshiser had pitched more than 300 innings. Following his 7 innings of shutout relief, St Louis Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog told the press, "The only thing I don't like about Orel Hirshiser is that he named his son Orel Hirshiser V." Herzog's baptismal name was Dorrel Norman Elvert, you read that correctly, so Herzog's opinion justifiably counts for more than yours or mine.

The following day, Houston and LA had a 1:30 PM Sunday matinee. That game went 13 innings, and Houston won again, completing a four game sweep. Good thing the Dodgers had Monday off, right? Wrong. On Monday the Dodgers were scheduled to play a double-header against Atlanta. To accommodate that, the Dodgers called up from AAA Albuquerque a skinny 21 year old named Ramon Martinez, and crossed their fingers. Martinez threw a six-hit complete game shutout. In gratitude, the Dodgers sent him back to AAA after the game. The second game of the double header was started by a rookie called up a week earlier named John Wetteland. That game the Dodgers also won. The Dodgers' closer, Jay Howell, soon anointed Wetteland as the King of the Brain-Dead Heavers, for his unwillingness to subtract from his big fastball and sharp-breaking curve. It would take Wetteland some pains to learn that a little drop in velocity or spin might confuse hitters. He went on to lead MLB in saves in the 1990's, the decade when cocaine went out of fashion and steroids came in.

Living well is the best revenge. Ramon Martinez rejoined the Dodgers in 1990, posting a record of 20-6. The press fawned over him, which might cause a young man of humble origins to deflect attention from himself. Or at least try to. "Believe it or not," Martinez told reporters, "I have a kid brother who's better than I am."

This was surely false modesty. In any event, the Dodgers didn't believe it, and traded the kid brother to the Montreal Expos. A couple of years later, when Pedro Martinez won the first of his Cy Young Awards, we'd all heard of him.

Isn't it just easier to know Joe Cronin was #4?

Fourth choice was Ted Williams, of course #9. In general, pitchers do not have single digit numbers.

Alas, I could not compete with the great in Cleveland and Minnesota as a scheduling anomaly had me playing alone downtown in Chicago, far from home. Kudos to both teams!

_________________
Merkin

I'm still trying to figure out the strategic benefit of intentionally choosing an incorrect answer.

MERKIN doesn't much approve of this either, but he enjoys a libertarian perspective, and is willing to give me free reign.

My assumption is that prospective answers which are not chosen are more quickly eliminated than answers which are chosen by any of the players in whatever site you happen to be patronizing. Within the confines of Mouse Hollow, the woman to whom this theory is credited admits that hers is a bias.

This theory won't work for Countdown, or any other format with clues. The coup should only be attempted in a wipeout format, by players who are risking relatively few points.

MERKIN, by the way, got his handsome avatars into the HOF Top 10 for both Six and Topix on Thursday night, while playing solo at BWW-Chicago, right down the street from the dinner he had just attended, hosted by the Chicago Branch of the Trilateral Commission. Or such is their cover. It doesn't really matter to me. I'm just a tourist in the Land of Love.

I was at the Sunday game. My mom would get seats from her job behind the Astros dugout. Good times!!

So NOMAR was in the seats when the Astros completed the four game sweep that efficiently hung the Dodgers out to dry and twisting in the wind.

The '88 Dodgers went 94-67 and won the World Series. The '89 Dodgers went 77-83 and went home.

Now all you Dodger fans know who to blame. It was Ramon's mom.

Nothing to worry about, NOMAR. Your typical Dodger fan is too louche to march, torch in hand, on Houston.

By the way, the illustrious JohnL won't be at B-52 this Saturday afternoon, so I don't know whom you and the other heavies at Coach's are going to abuse. I'll be playing for my usual 11.4, and if I do make the Final Top 20, it'll surely be an accident, from which you and every other God-fearing citizen can politely be expected to avert your eyes.

MERKIN raises an interesting question. Whose numbers should we remember?

According to my inexact calculations, of the 323 Immortals enshrined in Cooperstown, 224 were players. 318 players are enshrined in Canton OH. Does the word, "enshrined", grate on your nerves? 154 players are enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame (how humble-bragging is that?), and there are 271 pucksters enshrined in Toronto, Ontario.

In regard to the four major North American team sports, there are roughly 967 players enshrined in their Halls of Fame.

Regrettably, MERKIN, the answer is No.

Does it help that a decent number of the 224 played before players started wearing numbers on their backs? Didn't think so.

Well, KAUFMAN, you're just talking about one sport, rather than the several, but yes, your observation does help.

As KAUFMAN was aware, and some of us weren't, baseball numbers were first introduced into the Majors in 1929, and generally adopted by the mid-'30's.

In an era when nutrition and training weren't part of the package, there were any number of athletes who put up spectacular numbers against opponents who were less talented and less prepared. So the number of early Hall-of-Fame ballplayers is arguably disproportionate to the more competitive, post-Ruthian era.

(Here followed, since deleted, some digressions fueled not by cogency but by muse juice.)

The assignment of numbers is, or could be, completely random in three of the four major team sports, and it wouldn't make much strategic difference. Maybe a hockey coach juggles his lines based on the numbers he sees pouring off his opponent's bench. The skaters themselves are too busy to take note of numbers, and broadly speaking that's true in basketball as well. In football it matters quite a bit. The offensive line needs to know where a JJ Watt or a Lawrence Taylor is lining up. The safeties need to know where eligibility among the offense begins and ends along the line of scrimmage. A top corner shadowing a top wide-out has to be able to locate his man. That said, it isn't necessary for JJ Watt (or Aaron Judge) to wear Number 99. Watt could wear something in the 70's. Apart from catering to a player's whim or superstition, the specific number he wears is detached from any other signification.

So while sports numbers are undoubtedly trivial, and thus a fit subject for Buzztime, they might among some of us be regarded as infra dig. Allowing that MERKIN's memory is more capacious than my own, he might well know the numbers of every player in Cooperstown blessed with one, as well as the colors on all the world's flags, and have plenty of brainpower left over for more pressing business. I, on the other hand, need a strategy to compete with better informed players who have such information cranially filed to provide them with efficient recall.

I've been hooked into playing Smartest Bar, and the worthiness of my strategic speculation is about to be repeatedly tested.

I think you should all play the baseball trivia more.Seems like many on intellectual side really prefer baseball as the sport of their choice.That is feeling I get.I do not really know if it has merit.And one could go on and on about knowledge.No matter how much one knows there is so much one does not.We are all limited,some more than others.


Long fly ball hit deep by Vic Wertz into spacious centerfield at the Polo Grounds in New York.The Say Hey Kid Willie Mays is going from shallow center field and tracking it down .His back is toward the infield.Number 24 reaches and catches it in the 1954 World Series.It is the defining play of the series.Giants win 1954 World Series against Cleveland led by one of the most dramatic catches in World Series history.